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If you're looking for a book on PHP, I recommend Professional PHP Programming from Wrox Press. As long as you have a basic knowledge of the language (attainable with the tutorials mentioned by Fletch and Keith) then it will guide you through to becoming an advanced programmer.

As to the pros and cons, basically it is faster than most of the other languages. Easier to use and learn (or at least IMO ). The only real con I can think of is the fact that it has less support on web servesr than Perl, but that is changing fast